


Secure

by SingingShantiesAllTheWay



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Bondage, Canonically Ace Character, Male-Female Friendship, Non-Sexual Bondage, Not a ship, Other, Rope Bondage, To reiterate- this is not sexual and involves no gratification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23746657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingShantiesAllTheWay/pseuds/SingingShantiesAllTheWay
Summary: Safety comes in many guises, and trust is a fine foundation.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde
Comments: 45
Kudos: 93





	1. Wilde

It was quite late. Wilde had stopped watching the time quite a while ago - what would be the point? - and was instead staring at a bottle on the table in front of him. There was a glass as well, as yet empty.

The bottle, he was quite certain, held nothing that would make him happy, but it would assuredly make him drunk. Good liquor was impossible to find right now, but _effective_ liquor abounded, and Wilde’s cultivated tastes were currently deadlocked with his innate practicality.

It wasn’t like it would actually help him _sleep_. His lip curled at the thought. Sleep appeared to have permanently abandoned him, and Wilde was resigned to this. What one could not change, one accepted, and moved on. Keep calm, carry on, and all that filthy pile of bollocks.

That tipped the balance. Wilde sighed and reached for the liquor. The cork made a pleasing pop when he tugged it out, but the aroma that rose from the bottle made his eyes water. He suppressed a sneeze and tipped a measure of the contents into the glass in front of him.

It was suspiciously clear. Wilde squinted at it, frowning, and swirled the glass, then held his breath and knocked it back.

-and _coughed_ as it nearly knocked _him_ back.

Wilde dropped the glass back on the table and wheezed, trying not to choke. He was fairly certain the alcohol had turned into vapor the instant it hit his tongue, and it may in fact have bypassed his bloodstream and just saturated his brain directly.

“Wotcher, Wilde.”

Wilde, still choking on the atrocious liquor, nearly jumped out of his skin. Sasha was leaning on the doorframe, where he was certain she hadn’t been just a moment ago, just as he was certain the door hadn’t opened to let anyone in.

 _How did she do that?_ Granted, it was a valuable skill, but intensely unnerving when practised on the party.

Wilde dragged a hand over his watering eyes. “Hello Sasha,” he replied, his liquor-roughened voice aiming for smooth and landing closer to smothered. He peered at her while he struggled to ensure his usual mask was firmly in place. “You should be sleeping. I did _say_ I’d take watch.”

Sasha snorted and pushed off the doorframe to slink over to the table. “Right, mate. You look like the only thing you should be watchin’ is the backs o’your eyelids.”

He couldn’t help the wince.

“That the stuff Azu found?” Sasha waved at the bottle in front of him, then leaned in to sniff its open mouth. Her eyes crossed and she jerked back. “Pffaugh, that smells like it’d dissolve my daggers.”

Wilde gave her a humourless grin. “I think it might,” he conceded, and poured another measure into the glass. “Have a nip?”

Sasha contemplated this, then shrugged. “Yeah, alright,” she said. Her face, when she took a minute sip, was a delightful grotesque, and Wilde couldn’t help a weak laugh.

“Oh, don’t be offended,” he said at her glare, and reclaimed the glass. “It did the same thing to me.”

Sasha relaxed. “...yeah, it kinda did,” she allowed. She hooked a foot around the leg of the nearby chair and tugged it out, then turned it around to sit down, its back against the table. “You do look a right mess, mate,” she said conversationally.

Wilde considered the bottle, and the glass, and Sasha, and his own state, and acknowledged that the latter of these was not good. Sasha was observant, and also remarkably good at discretion. The glass was half full. Or possibly half empty - Wilde wasn’t sure on which side of that particular philosophical divide he fell anymore. The bottle had a good deal left in it.

It was quite late. It was quiet. He was reasonably certain they were the only two awake.

Wilde came to a decision.

“I,” he agreed airily, “am, in fact, a right mess.” He knocked back the rest of the shot before he could reconsider, and sputtered through another bout of coughing.

Sasha looked startled. “You _must_ be,” she said, “if you’re willin’ to admit it.” She thought a moment, then reached to pour him another shot of the potent alcohol. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink before.”

Wilde stared morosely down into the glass. “I generally don’t.”

Sasha leaned her elbows on the back of her chair, tipped her head, and stared at him for a moment. Wilde managed to retain what semblance of composure he currently held, and saluted her with the glass before swallowing its contents. The hazy liquor went down more easily with each glass.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Wilde stared at her, the glass frozen halfway back to the table. After a moment, he carefully finished setting it down.

He took a breath.

He let it out.

He nodded. “Actually... I think I do.”

Sasha seemed as surprised as he felt, but just nodded.

“Alright then. I’m listenin’.”

Wilde poured another shot, hoping his hand wasn’t visibly shaking as badly as it felt.

“I’m... carrying rather a lot, right now,” he began, and raised a quelling hand when Sasha drew a breath. “I know,” he acknowledged. “You all are as well. And that’s in large part due to me.” He let out a breath in a heavy sigh. “I regret that, I genuinely do. There is _so much_ at stake right now... you cannot imagine how dreadfully important the work is that we are doing.”

Wilde smiled, and knew it was a ghastly, bitter expression. He didn’t bother to hide it.

“I am, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, something of a central point for much of this. It’s not the work I envisaged myself doing, when I agreed to sign on with the Meritocracy, but it’s the work I must do.” He shrugged and took the shot, putting the glass back down onto the table a little harder than he’d intended. Sasha was right - he _didn’t_ drink much, and a steady stream of extremely hard liquor was probably a very bad idea.

Right now, Wilde didn’t care.

“Everything’s going to shit, Sasha,” he said quietly. “It’s not the sort of thing, as your handler, that I should be telling you, but... you deserve to know. I don’t think all hope is lost, but it’s. It’s going to be difficult, keeping the world stitched together.”

He looked down at the glass again, which was empty, and reached for the bottle to remedy that. Sasha’s hand was warm when it came down on top of his, on top of the bottle. Wilde could feel her scars - there were so many. He’d never quite realised how damaged she had become in service to his agency.

“Might wanna slow down there, mate,” Sasha said quietly. He was startled to hear actual concern in her voice. It was that rather than sensibleness which prompted him to obey the gentle suggestion. Wilde withdrew his hand.

“So like,” Sasha drew the bottle closer to her, just out of Wilde’s reach. “Like - if you’re the, the _center_ of all this. Or at least _a_ center. Like - you need to _take care of yourself_ , Wilde, because _I_ don’t know what to do or where to go, we need _you_ for that.” She hesitated, then continued more quietly, “Dunno if the lads ‘n Azu’d agree but - we need you with us, right? Yeah.”

That admission, Wilde thought sourly, must have cost her dearly, and he immediately berated himself for the uncharitable thought. His relationship with the group was hardly _friendly_ , but it was at least... increasingly one of mutual respect. He hoped.

“You should sleep, Wilde,” Sasha said more quietly. “Drinkin’ ain’t gonna solve your problems, y’know? A good night’s sleep and some breakfast, that’ll help.”

She seemed nonplussed by his laughter, and no wonder; Wilde could hear for himself how closely it skirted the line of hysterical.

“I would,” he told her, “ _love_ to sleep. I really would. If you can figure out how to make that happen,” Wilde spread his arms wide, leaned back in his chair. “I’m all ears.”

Sasha scowled, but held her ground. Wilde added determination to the list of qualities he quietly admired about her.

“Alright, if you can’t sleep, fine, I mean it’s - it’s weird but I don’t sleep much either so I guess I can’t judge. Can you at least like... find a hobby? Something to do that isn’t _all this_ -” She indicated with a sweeping gesture the world at large. “-to like, take your mind off it a while? Somethin’ to help you _relax_.”

About to fire off something flippantly caustic, Wilde hesitated.

He had always been, for lack of a better term, high-strung. Wilde was ambitious and highly motivated, with a skill for putting himself squarely into the middle of whatever was going on and wrapping his hands around the strings that guided the course of events. This was by its nature extremely stressful. Doing it anyway was in _his_ nature, but that did not lessen the effects.

And once, rather a long time ago before he had put himself into the service of the Meritocracy, Wilde had had an opportunity to try an unconventional but - as it turned out - highly effective method of mitigating that.

Wilde found himself abruptly _yearning_ for that experience again, for someone with the skill to help him back into that blissful, rare state of _letting go_. Of feeling, for once, his mind completely empty and at peace.

Sasha was watching him, her head tilted and an expression of guarded curiosity on her face.

Wilde’s thoughts were fuzzy from the liquor or exhaustion or both. He knew this, and didn’t care. It was just enough, _just enough_ to soften the edges of his carefully-maintained barriers and let something a touch vulnerable peek through.

“I was relaxed once,” he finally told her and was gratified by the flash of a tiny grin, as he’d intended. “It was not long before I joined the Meritocratic service... I’ve never tried it since then.”

Sasha made some small noise of encouragement, a wordless ‘go on, then’, and Wilde sighed.

“It isn’t... the sort of thing one generally talks about,” Wilde ventured. “It’s not like that,” he hastened to continue, catching the shift in her expression; “I’ve done - well, I mean, you know of course about Bertrand.”

They shared a moment of disgust. Camaraderie came from the oddest sources.

“And that sort of ah... _connection_ ... is not uncommon. But it isn’t _relaxing_ .” Wilde sighed. “These days, it’s all _work_ . Do you know how disappointing it is to have all of your liaisons be nothing but a _chore_?” 

He considered Sasha’s sudden discomfiture and blinked, slightly startled. “You don’t. That’s- slightly unexpected but actually quite... comforting.” Wilde pressed on, shoving the conversation past this point for Sasha’s sake. “ _But._ While this experience was not _that_ sort of thing, it is still something at which a great many people tend to look askance.”

Sasha, by now recovered, reached for the cork. “What was it, then? Cos now I’m curious.”

Wilde hesitated. Then he shrugged, propped his chin in his hand, stared at nothing in particular, and told her.

Sasha listened, first curious, then baffled, then back to curious, and finally thoughtful.

“I could do that for you,” she told Wilde when he’d finished.

He gaped at her, speechless.

Sasha shrugged. “Yeah, sounds dead easy. And I mean, the way you talk about it - y’r right, ‘snot like _that_ at all. I could do that for you, no problem.”

Wilde, thrown completely off his stride, stared at her.

When Sasha showed no signs of duplicity - and Wilde was certain he’d know, she was about as good a liar as he was a nun - he cautiously allowed himself to assume her offer was genuine, and began considering it from every conceivable angle.

Certainly she was strong enough - Sasha looked skinny but it was the lean build of someone with wiry muscle. He’d seen what she could do with a dagger and pure strength of arm.

And she seemed sincere in her offer, taking what Wilde had told her at face value and without judgement.

He suspected she had the other skills necessary, as well. One did not survive in Other London, much less as part of a mercenary company (even one as unusual as the LOLOMG) without a well-rounded skillset.

Wilde watched Sasha replace the cork in the bottle. For the second time that evening, he came to a decision.

“All right,” Wilde said to her quietly. “If you’re sure.”

He hated the thread of hopefulness in his voice, and knew Sasha had not missed it either, because the look she gave him held just a tinge of pity.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m sure. Gimme a day or two. I can find the stuff we’d need.”

Sasha stood up, gave him a crooked grin, and slipped out the door, leaving Wilde to contemplate the incomprehensible turn his evening had just taken.

It wasn’t until he reached for the bottle again that he realised she had taken it with her.


	2. Sasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Curiosity is a fine thing, and a patient teacher a gift.

Sasha was as good as her word. She always was. It took her three days, in fact, before she was able to nick everything that she needed, but she managed to “find” the last few items exploring an “empty” warehouse that was of course “unlocked”.

Everything was unlocked, really, when you thought about it.

Eventually.

Sasha’d noted locations too while she was scavenging, putting virtual pins in her ever-expanding mental map of the city. She hoped she’d understood enough of what Wilde told her to select actually viable options. Sasha supposed she could just haul him around to each in turn until he found one he liked.

Supplies nestled securely in her pack, Sasha returned to the safehouse.

The evening passed pleasantly enough. Azu cooked, delightedly crafting a delicious mélange of rice, chicken, spicy peppers and other vegetables Sasha couldn’t name, and a rainbow of spices that exploded across the tongue like delectable fire. It was a hell of a long way from eel keesh, but Sasha considered it worth the metaphorical journey. She even managed to get seconds before Hamid had finished his first bowlful, which was something of a minor victory and certainly unprecedented for Sasha. And it made Azu happy, which kindled a soft warmth in Sasha’s secret heart.

Wilde was quiet through the meal, although that wasn’t necessarily a departure, particularly with Grizzop and Hamid cheerfully arguing about something - Sasha wasn’t sure what it was tonight, largely tuning it out as a matter of course. Grizzop and Hamid were usually debating _something_ at mealtime, amusedly moderated by Azu. There was comfort in the predictability of it.

When she finished eating and while the rest of the party indulged their combative instincts, Sasha caught Wilde’s eye and gave him the slightest of nods. Many people would have missed his reaction, but her observant eye caught the miniscule drop of his shoulders that might have been relief. Good.

She got to her feet and collected her bowl and spoon. It was Grizzop’s turn to do the washing-up, which was helpful, because now that Sasha was facing _actually doing this_ , her insides were buzzing with anticipation and worry. What if she got it wrong? What if it didn’t help? What if she hurt him? What if, what if, what if...

She didn’t say anything as she left the room except to murmur a quiet “‘sgood stuff,” to Azu on her way past. There was nothing unusual in this, and nobody remarked on it. Grizzop and Hamid vaguely waved in her direction, Azu beamed at her, and Wilde only glanced up disinterestedly from whatever he was reading.

Sasha drifted through the quiet house to where she had dropped her bag, hoiked the strap up over her shoulder, and slipped noiselessly out the door.

Perhaps half an hour later, maybe a little more - long enough not to attract notice - Wilde too came out into the street. He didn’t look for her, merely started walking, and Sasha tailed along in his wake for a bit, careful to remain unseen - not necessarily by _Wilde_ , but by anybody else. Neither of them, she was sure, wanted to try to explain to anybody in the party why the pair of them were sneaking off, vaguely together, into the dark.

After they’d left the safehouse well enough behind, she ghosted up beside him and whispered, “Wotcher, Wilde.”

He didn’t jump, to his credit. Sasha could see his sidelong glance to her, the renewed tightness in his shoulders. Wilde didn’t speak.

“Couple places that might do,” she told him, quiet as a breath; he only nodded and gave a tiny gesture that might have been a silent ‘after you’. Sasha took it as such, at least, and led him along a series of back alleys and side turnings that had become familiar to her during her extensive exploration of the city’s less-used spaces.

As it turned out she needn’t have worried much about scouting a variety of locations. Wilde pronounced the first one - an abandoned, one-room building that might have been used for storage once upon a time - ideal. It was isolated, tucked into the corner of a small, disused market square; it had no windows, and equally importantly, it could be locked from the inside.

Sasha put down her pack and fished out a couple of lanterns and a packet of matches. She passed these to Wilde to light, and busied herself jimmying the old, rusted lock closed, ensuring no intrusions. This completed, she straightened and turned to face Wilde.

He stood not far from her in the pool of yellow light cast by the twinned lanterns he’d set near the wall, out of the way. Sasha was abruptly struck by how _small_ he seemed. Wilde didn’t exactly have a sportsman’s build, but he was tall, and he carried himself with the unassailable confidence of a much larger man. Tonight, though... 

Tonight none of that confidence was in evidence. Wilde wasn’t looking at her, instead staring at some point in the middle distance somewhere off to the side and close to the floor. He stood like a man adrift, hands loose at his sides, expression hunted.

Wilde seemed small and tired and _frightened_ and it shook Sasha to her core.

“Alright?”

She said it quietly, but in the empty room, her voice seemed intrusive to her ears. Wilde’s head snapped up and he focused on her with an abrupt intensity that startled her.

“No.” He laughed, hollowly. “But regardless. Did you find everything?”

Sasha nudged the pack with her boot. “Yup. Sorry it took so long. Good rope’s surprsin’ly hard to come by ‘round here.”

Wilde nodded but didn’t say anything more. His attention had drifted again to the middle distance and Sasha found herself wondering what he was staring at, a thousand miles away.

“Tell you what,” she said, “I’ll get the gear set out, right, and you tell me what t’expect.”

Sasha didn’t wait for a response; she grabbed the pack and slunk past him to the middle of the room, where the lantern light was focused, where she could see. She crouched down, opened the pack and began pulling out the contents.

Wilde followed her, walking slowly. He stopped a few feet away - _well_ outside what even Sasha would consider her personal space - and drew a sharp breath.

“What to expect.” He let the rest of the breath out in a rush and drew another one. “For you - not much. Just... ropes and knots.”

Sasha nodded and began separating the lengths of rope. When she’d found the stash of them, she’d just grabbed everything she could, not bothering to sort or organise, and now they were all twined 'round one another in an enormous tangle. “Yeah, knots I can do. Zo-” She caught herself, awkwardly rephrased- “-I learned a lot of ‘em a while back.”

Wilde made no comment on her abrupt and obvious rephrasing. He only watched as she followed with sharp eyes and nimble fingers the serpentine coils through their tangles. Aware of his attention, Sasha couldn't resist showing off, just a bit, and swiftly secured one of the rope-ends around her wrist in a skillful bowline. To keep it out of the mess, of course. Wouldn't do to lose it again.

“An’ what about you?” she asked as she worked.

Wilde’s face was mostly shadow, the lantern-light angled low across the floor rather than illuminating upward. Sasha could read his posture though: tension rode his shoulders like a nightmare. And there was something else, too. Something yearning.

Wilde slid one hand up the opposite arm distractedly and gripped his elbow, hiding behind the protective barrier of his arm over his own torso.

“For me..."

It didn't take Sasha long, while he contemplated his answer, to separate individual ropes from the rest. She made quick work of coiling them each neatly up, untied the knot at her wrist, and set the newly-organised bindings aside. Wilde’s gaze flicked hungrily over to them and away again.

“For me - I will be quiet, probably.” Sasha glanced up at him - Wilde hadn’t moved any closer, and watched her now with cautious eyes.

“Alright,” she told him. “Anythin’ else I should know?”

“You should know that you won’t hurt me,” Wilde murmured, and laughed a little at her expression. “I _know_ you’ve thought about it. You’re a thoughtful person, Sasha. It’s why I can trust you with this.”

Wilde seemed less adrift, now that the ropes were visible there next to her, sturdy and present and _real._ He shrugged out of his coat, carefully folded it and set it aside on the floor.

“I need to feel it,” he explained as he began unbuttoning his plain shirt. “On my skin. It needs to be that sort of immediacy.” The last button slipped free and Wilde slid the shirt off his shoulders, folded it, and placed it with the jacket. Sasha had never seen this much of him before - he had scars, which surprised her, and not a lot of muscle, which didn’t, although what was there was well enough defined. She suspected he was stronger than he looked.

Wilde toed off his boots and placed them with the growing pile of clothing, and his hands fell to the waistband of his trousers. There, he paused, and turned his head to stare for a moment at Sasha, almost but not quite smiling. She stared back, refusing to blush.

“You are _certain_ ,” Wilde said seriously, despite the curl of his mouth, “that you wish to do this? I will not be entirely nude-” Sasha felt a swift dart of relief. “-but I know that for certain sensibilities..." He shrugged.

Sasha found herself grateful that he was giving her one last chance to bow out of the entire thing. Perhaps oddly, it served only to strengthen her resolve.

“‘m not _entirely_ ignorant,” she replied bullishly, and Wilde laughed, surprisingly genuine, if too brief.

“I prefer modesty myself,” Wilde told her, even as his nimble fingers swiftly and unceremoniously unbuttoned his trousers, “except in specific circumstances. I would not otherwise have dreamt of disrobing where you’d witness. I have too much respect for you.”

Two compliments in as many minutes. Sasha was astonished. But then again... they had specifically designed this place, this evening, to be something of a no-man’s-land in which, however briefly, _Wilde’s_ barriers at least could be safely discarded for a time.

“I... appreciate that, Wilde,” Sasha finally replied. Although he might have been surprised at how unconcerned she actually was about modesty in the general sense. There hadn’t been much room for it, growing up when and how she did.

Wilde bent to tug off his socks, then slid his trousers free of both legs. Once again, he carefully folded these and placed them with the rest of his clothing, and Sasha realised abruptly that this was part of the entire process. It was a ritual. Wilde was peeling off his protective outer layer and carefully putting it aside to be donned again later. He was making himself vulnerable.

And that was the key. Wilde was leaving _himself_ open. It was an active choice, made and enacted deliberately and in full confidence of - and trust in - his chosen observer. Sasha, as she mulled over this realisation, found herself wondering what that might be like, _choosing to be vulnerable._

Wilde had been telling the truth: otherwise unclothed, he did not divest himself of the loose linen undergarment preserving the modesty he’d already addressed. He turned to face Sasha, and while he did not blush - she was privately sure he didn’t know how to - he at least seemed... subdued. Almost _shy_.

Nah. Couldn’t be. Not _Wilde._

She bent to pick up a slender coil of rope, a little slippery to the touch, and offered it out for Wilde’s inspection. He shook his head.

“No, I trust you.” He hesitated then continued, “One final thing before we begin. When I am ready to end it, or if something happens - we will need a signal, a word or phrase that we both know means ‘stop’ and nothing else.”

Sasha stared at him, then laughed, and then catching the wounded expression Wilde quickly hid, tried to explain.

“Nah, nah, ‘m not laughin’ at you. I mean I _am_ but not like - not like _that_ . ‘S like - you know how like, as a laugh or something, one o’y’r mates’ll say like, ‘bet you can’t NOT think about a, a pink gnome’, or whatever, and then that’s all you can think about, right, no matter how hard you try to think of _anythin’ else_ ? This is like, the opposite o’that. I _swear_ I know words but like, bugger if I can tell y’one right now.”

It was a little warm spot in Sasha’s heart that Wilde’s laugh was another sincere one.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, and took the three or four steps that brought him to stand in front of her.

Wilde was so much taller than Sasha. It was something she _knew_ , of course, but she’d seldom had need to stand close enough to him that it was this obvious. Sasha tilted her head to look up at his face. He gazed down at her for a moment, seeming thoughtful, then murmured, “Dorian. If I need to stop, I will say ‘Dorian’.” His smile was a wry twist, no humor underpinning it. “Believe me when I tell you that it is not a thing I would say in any normal circumstance.”

Sasha canted her head, scrutinizing Wilde’s face. He looked _so tired_ , but that wasn’t anything new. It was the swiftly-banished wistfulness that had caught her attention: something else Wilde would not, in any normal circumstances, reveal.

“Alright,” she agreed. “Dorian it is.” She began unspooling the rope in her hands, feeling the smooth slide of it through her fingers as it spilled unbound to the floor. “What if _I_ need to stop?” Sasha squared her shoulders back and tried out a trick of Wilde’s that had annoyed the hell out of her since she’d first met him: she arched one eyebrow, trying to look imperious. She was reasonably certain she wasn’t even close, but it was the thought that counted, right?

Whatever target Sasha did or did not hit, Wilde accepted her question in earnest.

“You may use the same, if you like,” he said quietly. Wilde took a step backward, and sank to his knees on the rough floor at her feet. “I am quite certain it’s not a name you’d normally utter, either.”

Sasha blinked down at him. This was. This was _completely uncharted_ territory and for a few critical moments her brain fizzed with panicky incomprehension. Wilde was, when all was said and done, an _authority_ figure, he represented the _Meritocrats_ for gods’ sakes. Authorities didn’t- they didn’t _kneel in front of you_. They glowered or sneered, and threatened, and generally made life unpleasant or annoying, but they didn’t.

 _Kneel_.

They didn’t kneel. Not for people like her.

But Wilde _was_ kneeling. Mirroring her posture from only moments ago, he’d tipped his head back to look up at her; the loose glory of his dark hair was swept back and away from his face, so that even in the dim and uncertain light, Sasha could see him clearly.

The exhaustion was still there, and the faint edge of hope, and more than that, now: trust.

Wilde had _meant it_ when he said he trusted her. Sasha coughed, covering up something that felt, in her constricting chest, suspiciously like a sob. The number of people in Sasha’s life who genuinely _trusted her_ was quite a small one, nearly as small as the reverse.

“Dorian, then,” Sasha said quickly, hoping the tightness in her voice wasn’t obvious. “Yeah. ‘s a good one, innit. Dorian. I’ll remember that.”

Sasha frowned down at the rope in her hands, hastily shoving the moment’s discomfiture down and away. 

“So like... I can do knots, right, but. You’ll have to tell me how to like... how the rope’s supposed to go, yeah?”

“I’ll guide you.” Wilde’s voice was quieter already. Tension still threaded through it like poison, but it was not _only_ tension, now. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back up at her. “I’ll narrate, if you like. Until I can’t anymore.”

Sasha nodded, then swallowed. “Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah, I think- I think I’d like that. Lemme know you’re still alright, an’ that.”

“Good." Wilde drew in a long breath and let it out. "Find the middle of the rope, and double it over at that point.”

Sasha found the ends and held them against each other, and spooled the rope through her hands until she found the middle point. She looked up at Wilde. He was watching her hands, focused there as though to look away was forbidden.

“About... how big are your hands? Ah, good.” He nodded when Sasha held one up, fingers splayed wide. “About a hands’ width down from the bend, knot it.

Sasha did so, swiftly and efficiently, and looked up at him again for her next instruction.

“Good,” Wilde murmured. “Now - come here, I’ll show you how to place it..."

Sasha drew closer, holding out the knotted rope. Wilde’s hands were cool over hers as he, rather than performing this step himself, guided her through it. It was Sasha’s hands that draped the rope over his shoulders, the looped end hanging between his shoulder blades, the knot a bit beneath the nape of his neck where his hair brushed her fingers.

Wilde shivered as the smooth rope slithered over his skin. The shudder traveled the full length of his body as though he had taken an abrupt chill, and gooseflesh followed in its wake. Sasha peered at him in mingled curiosity and concern.

“Alright?”

Wilde nodded.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I’m fine.” He looked up at her again, and Sasha felt another swift stab of that same shock and disbelief that anyone at all - much less _Wilde_ \- was on his knees in front of her. “You’re all right to continue?”

Sasha nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. This - ‘snot so bad, so far.”

“Thank you,” Wilde murmured, and toyed with the rope’s loose ends that hung down his chest, his fine fingers caressing them like a lover. “So. Next - tie the same knot here-” He lifted his chin and touched those same fingertips beneath the hollow of his throat. “Do you see where the bones come together? It should rest just below that.”

Sasha bent down to look where Wilde indicated. It was easy to see where he meant - the ridges of his collarbones were clearly defined. Her gaze traced the shallow dip behind each that swept upward to become the curve of muscle at his shoulders. She was struck by the delicacy of his skin there - pale, unsurprisingly, with the lightest dusting of freckles. Sasha fought the urge to touch them, suddenly curious if they were as fragile as they seemed.

Sasha focused her attention back on the rope, safely impersonal. “So like... right here, yeah?” Her fingers brushed his skin nevertheless as Sasha tied a second knot identical to the first. She was reasonably certain she hadn’t meant to. Wilde shivered again, less violently this time, but still noticeable. It was a strange novelty that someone would react like that to _her_.

Wilde reached up to run his fingers lightly over the knot, and nodded.

“Yes. That’s perfect.”

His voice was mellowing, just a little.

“So. Perhaps another handspan down, tie another knot like that one. It should fall-” Wilde touched his chest, fingertips resting at the base of his breastbone. “-about here.”

Sasha, starting to get a glimmering of understanding, swiftly tied the next knot. “Like that, yeah?”

“Yes. Exactly like that. Now three more, just like those, the same distance apart.”

Sasha made quick work of this as well, increasingly comfortable with the feel of the rope in her hands, with her own competency in knotting it, with the occasional contact with Wilde’s skin as she worked. This last was still _strange_ , to be sure. But it was not _unpleasant_.

“Perfect.” Wilde breathed out a sigh when Sasha finished the final knot, and it was very nearly the most contented sound Sasha had ever heard him make. “Now. Step behind me, please. I will handle this part, as it may make you uncomfortable to do so.”

For the moment consumed with curiosity and a tinge of trepidation, Sasha did as Wilde asked. He raised up on his knees so that he was no longer sitting back on his heels, and parted his legs. The rope flicked back between his thighs and pooled between his calves.

“Draw the ropes out behind me please,” Wilde murmured, and Sasha did as he asked, pointedly not watching him while he presumably adjusted where and how they lay against him.

“Now thread them through the loop you made above your first knot. They should be just tight enough not to slip.” Sasha could hear the amusement in Wilde’s voice as she followed this instruction. “This is the closest you would come to injuring me in this process, if you pull too tightly, and it would be a grievous wound indeed.”

Sasha snorted and flirted with the idea of giving the ropes just the slightest jerk, but discarded the thought all but immediately. Wilde _trusted_ her, however bizarre that might seem, and she was loath to prove him wrong. She pulled the full length of the loose ropes through the loop at his back, and gave a very - _very_ \- careful tug, testing the tension.

“ _Yes_ ,” Wilde sighed when she had finished. The ropes hung down his back from between his shoulder blades, swinging just a little as he lowered himself to rest on his heels once more. “That’s perfect.”

Sasha couldn’t help running her fingers over the knot and the loop, feeling the twisting of the rope, the way it rested against the natural curve of his spine. Wilde must have noticed - his shoulderblades drew together just a little bit in reaction - but he made no comment.

“Bring the ropes back around to the front,” he told her, and lifted his arms, folding his hands together at the back of his head. “One to each side. They should rest just beneath my arms.”

Sasha had to lean to pass the ropes around, catching them together with one hand so as not to let them fall from their positioning. It pressed her torso against Wilde’s lifted arm and shoulders, just for a moment, and she was startled to feel him gently shivering, a constant and unending vibration as though he was approaching frostbite.

“Wilde,” she said as she moved around to face him, “sure you’re alright? You’re _shakin’,_ mate.”

The smile that he gave her was a small one.

“I’m fine. It’s... anticipation, I suppose. I’m not cold. Just." Wilde thought a moment, his dark eyes unfocused, and when he continued his voice seemed just as faraway as his gaze. “I feel as though I am ablaze with electricity, just beneath my skin. Like it’s chasing itself through my body, too fast to follow and too sharp to ignore.”

Sasha blinked when his eyes abruptly refocused on her face.

“It’s not unpleasant, Sasha, I assure you.” Wilde examined her face intently. “Are _you_ all right, still? You must tell me if you are not comfortable, at _any_ point. I will not do this at your expense.”

Sasha shook her head. “Nah,” she told him brightly. “‘M good. What’s next?”

Wilde studied her a moment more, perhaps searching for a lie, but there was nothing there to find. He nodded.

“Next. Pass the ropes through the first of the spaces between knots. You will pull them through completely, and then pass them each back in the direction they came. It will open the split into a diamond.”

“I do like diamonds,” Sasha said with a smirk, and Wilde grinned. The grin turned into a brief hiss as Sasha drew the ropes taut, exposing his chest through the opened space between the knots.

“That’s - just right,” Wilde gasped, and Sasha bit her lip. “Now. Pass them back behind me. You’re not... you’re not going to _knot_ this, just... pass the ends around the vertical column so that they are loosely tied around it. One over, one under.”

It took Sasha a couple of tries to see what he meant. Finally she managed the pattern of it, and without asking for the next step, brought the loose rope back around to the front. Wilde was smiling faintly, his eyes half-closed.

Sasha watched his face a moment. She had never seen him look so... _calm_ . Wilde was smug and superior as a matter of course, and she had seen him unconscious and groggy with poison; she had seen him panicky and tense; uncomfortable; irritated... but never just. _Calm_. It was a revelation.

“Doin’ the same with the next open part, yeah?”

Wilde nodded. “Yes,” he murmured. “And then behind again, and then the next, and the next.”

Sasha worked swiftly and quietly. It seemed somehow disrespectful to speak and disturb the gradually-blossoming stillness that was settling over Wilde. Only when she reached the bottommost knot and space between - the twinned ropes running between his legs - did she hesitate.

Wilde opened his eyes, focusing on her face.

“I will handle this part, if you like,” he offered again, quietly. Sasha thought a moment, and shook her head. 

“‘s alright,” she answered, and bent to tuck the end of the first rope beneath the vertical band. “‘s’not like there’s anythin’ hangin’ out. An’ this is up too high anyway.” And it was - pulled snug, the rope rested over the ridge of his hip, well away from anything compromising.

“Besides,” Sasha continued quietly, “you’re - I mean, it looks like you’re in, like - a good space, yeah? I mean I _think_ so. An’ it’d be a shame to like, interrupt it. ‘m not _that_ squeamish.”

Wilde breathed softly out as Sasha worked the second loose rope through the other side and tugged it snugly over the ridge of his hip.

“You aren’t squeamish at all,” he said. “I’ve watched you wound and kill without hesitating, when you must.”

Sasha couldn’t prevent her blush, but kept working, and Wilde continued.

“I think... you’re simply _not interested_ in certain things.” His dark eyes fluttered closed as she crossed behind him and tugged the ends of the ropes gently tight against him. “Some people aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Sasha made some small, noncommittal noise, and to her gratitude, Wilde shifted topic.

“That’s the last for this part,” he told her. “When you cross them around the column this time, do it twice and knot it there. It should stay as tight as you make it. Whatever is left of the ends, just weave them up through the cross-ties to keep them out of the way.”

Sasha, by now entirely at ease with the feel of the rope and the method of the knots, did this swiftly and efficiently, then prowled around him. She stood in front of him and then, without speaking, dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of him.

Wilde was utterly still. Sasha was impressed; it was the kind of stillness she adopted to hide in, to wrap the shadows around herself and remain unseen. It was a kind of stillness that was difficult to learn and maintain. Most people were too fidgety, unable to keep themselves from shifting their weight or scratching a sudden itch on their nose, or a thousand other tiny things that betrayed their presence to anybody paying attention.

But Wilde was _still_. Perfectly, absolutely still. Sasha had a moment in which she wasn’t entirely certain he was still breathing.

There were shadows in here aplenty, cast by the dim lanterns on the floor, but Wilde did not seem to be trying to merge with them as Sasha did. It was rope, not darkness, wrapped around his form, but it seemed to affect him in the same way: it was something to be cocooned in, something encompassing and familiar.

Something to keep him safe.

“Alright, Wilde?” Sasha finally asked and then frowned. It felt wrong, somehow, that name. At least it did here, right now. It felt like... a separation, somehow. Like in using it she was removing herself from what they were doing, and that seemed somehow against the spirit of the thing.

Wilde was, right now, _incredibly_ open, extraordinarily vulnerable, and it seemed to Sasha only fair that she at least respect that enough to keep herself part of it with him.

His eyes must have been open just a bit, just enough to see her expression, because Wilde whispered a question rather than an answer.

“All right, Sasha?”

Her frown deepened.

“It feels... _wrong_ ,” she said, “callin’ you Wilde. I mean.” She gestured to him open-palmed, encompassing the totality of him in that moment: all but naked, kneeling, bound, _exposed._ “This is all - like, you’re - it just feels too... distant, yeah? Impersonal, like.” She dropped her hand, flustered. “I dunno how t’say it, ‘m not _good_ with words. Not like you are, an’ Hamid.”

Wilde leaned forward just a bit to peer into Sasha’s face, and there was a faint hint of a smile flirting with his lips.

“I do _have_ another name, you know.” The butterfly-smile landed for just a moment before flitting off again. “I even allow people to use it on occasion.”

Sasha only blinked at him, and even in this half-drowsy state, Wilde was still himself enough to roll his eyes.

“Oscar,” he told her. “My given name, as I’m sure you know, is Oscar, and if you would like to do so... I invite you to call me by it.” His shrug was impeded somewhat by the ropes lying snug over his shoulders. “Seems only fair, really. I don’t call you _Racket_.”

Sasha shuddered. “I’d stab you if you did,” she said. “Racket is... that’s Barrett. Not me. ‘m just Sasha.”

“Just Sasha,” Wilde said, and there was at the edges of his voice a hint of musicality that softened her name, rounded it somehow. “Just so. And right now, I’m just Oscar, then. For however long you need it to be.”

“Alright then,” Sasha said, and hesitated for the briefest of moments before continuing. “Oscar.”


	3. Oscar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intimacy is a spectrum. Sometimes it just means: safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #nobetawedielikemen on this one, I'm afraid. Odds are good I'll come back and edit this one later, but for now: an update, darlings, as promised. :)

Oscar wondered at himself.

‘ _Wilde’_ had become - had always been, really - more of a title. It was something that could be used to identify him without actually belonging to him. It was a signature lazily scrawled on reports or hotel receipts or bank cheques.

It was _distance_. It was _detachment_. It was a boundary.

‘ _Oscar_ ’, though.

There were actually very few people he had allowed or invited to use that name. It was an intimacy that he had carefully set aside as tangential to his work and his identity - which were, he was forced to admit, increasingly one and the same.

Giving it to Sasha - exposing that hidden space for _Sasha_ \- was an act Oscar had never expected of himself. And so he wondered.

And Sasha, equally unexpectedly, accepted his invitation.

She called Oscar by his name with her blunt and roughened voice, staring at him with eyes too old in a face too thin, and something warm and unanticipated took root somewhere in the secret depths of him.

Something _protective_.

Oscar exhaled a slow, controlled breath. Sasha, out of everyone in the little band of mercenaries calling themselves the LOLOMG, _least_ needed protecting. Her life had taught her well how to do that for herself. And in his- no; _their_ line of work - attachment was. Inadvisable.

Still. Oscar was losing that battle, he knew. Sasha had, as she was so skilled at doing, slipped entirely unnoticed in his estimation from ‘associate’ to ‘friend’ while he wasn't looking.

He could feel the ropes sliding against his bare skin as his chest contracted with his next breath. The delectable friction lay overtop the steady, deeper sensation of compression enveloping him. 

It was indescribably calming.

“So, like,” Sasha said, and Oscar redirected his focus to her. She was still folded to sit ungainly on the floor in front of him. “I got plenty o’rope, right. So ...'snext?”

“Legs,” he said quietly. “ _A_ leg. The. Ah, lacing will be similar.”

Oscar’s mind was softening at the edges, his thoughts no longer quite so sharp-edged and direct. Providing direction for Sasha was not _difficult_ yet... just something requiring a little more focus now, a little more effort.

Better to show than tell, he decided, and reached a hand toward Sasha.

“Let me show you?”

Sasha’s fingertips brushed Oscar’s palm as she passed him the rope and this combined with the supple slither of the binding through his fingertips made him shiver. He took a moment to let the frisson melt into something less intense, and continued.

“It’s helpful if at least one leg is bound,” Oscar told her, and slid the rope through his hands until he found the midpoint. Sasha watched with an intensity of focus that was at once reassuring and also slightly unsettling. “I’ll show you, on this one-” With deft and practised fingers, he looped the rope around his ankle and knotted it securely. “-so you will know how it’s done. If you wish to bind the other one. Only if you wish to.”

Oscar sat back on the floor and brought his knee up, then wound the doubled rope up from his ankle and around his leg, snugly binding calf and thigh together.

“Why wouldn’t I want to?” Sasha asked, still watching his hands. 

Oscar paused and rested his hands against his leg, the rope a sleek promise between his palms and the thin linen covering his upper thigh. He nodded down at his hands, and gave Sasha a wry smile. “Binding there involves... proximity. I won’t press you to do that work if you are not entirely comfortable.”

Sasha was quiet, and Oscar found he could not interpret her expression. He resumed his work with the rope, giving her the space, the quiet, the solitude - insofar as was possible - to come to whatever conclusion she was currently chewing over.

It was remarkably soothing. The silence, while pensive, was companionable, and it complemented the soft susurration of rope against skin as Oscar slipped the loose ends down through the first loop that kept his leg bent double. The knot was not a complicated one, and he had done this... many times. Muscle memory made it easy.

Oscar moved on to the next line of the spiral, repeating the pattern: loose rope beneath, loop around and up, knot. And again, each one closer to his hips, until the last knot rested snugly in the hollow between Oscar’s upper thigh and his groin, a pleasant and calming pressure, rather than stimulating.

He gently tugged the loose rope between his ankle and his thigh so that he could begin the same process up the other side, and was startled when Sasha’s hand fell lightly atop his. Oscar hadn’t even heard her move, had been, he realised, drifting gradually further over the boundary of the soft space he was craving.

He looked up at her. Sasha had shoved herself closer to him while he wasn’t paying attention and was now sitting closely enough that Oscar could faintly feel her warmth.

“I reckon,” she finally said, slowly as though feeling her way through the words, “‘slike- ‘slike th’bottom knot, right?” Sasha inclined her head toward the diamond pattern of rope already snugly encasing Oscar from shoulders to hips. “I mean. ‘s _close_ , right, but ‘snot like... _touchin_ ’ or nothin’.” Sasha looked up at him, and while she didn’t smile, still Oscar could read her expression now, and what he read there was something warm. “An’ like- you don’t _want_ me t’touch nothin’ an’ that’s- that’s _important._ ”

Sasha shrugged, and gently pulled the rope out of his grip. Oscar let go a shuddering breath as the rope slid against his leg. “I said I’d help you, mate, ‘n I meant it.”

Warm. Yes. Oscar felt something loosen in his chest, just a little.

“Thank you, Sasha.”

Oscar watched her hands while she followed his instructions to finish tying the simple, elegant ladder of rope around the outside of his leg and tried not to shiver at each brush of Sasha’s scarred fingertips against his bare skin.

“‘S easy enough,” Sasha finally decided when she had finished, and sat back on her heels in a crouch. “So... th’other one then, just like that, right?” 

Oscar nodded, and flexed the muscles in his leg to test the tension of the rope bindings. They gave not at all, and he closed his eyes, humming softly at the mild wave of calm pleasure that resulted. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you _relax_ before, W- Oscar,” Sasha said quietly. Oscar could hear the quiet slither of another loose rope as she selected the next one to be wrapped around him. “‘s, um... 's a good look on you.”

He couldn’t help a tiny smile, and opened his eyes just enough to watch Sasha through his lashes. She knelt nearby, spooling the doubled rope out through her hand to find the midpoint.

When she’d found it, Sasha glanced up at his face, then moved so that she sat directly in front of him, between the already-bound leg and his other, still outflung. In other circumstances it would have been very close to a compromising position, but now. Now it was simply... close.

Sasha tapped his unbound knee. “Can’t very well tie it all spread out like that,” she told him, grinning a little. Oscar gave an amused snort, and shifted his weight to one hip to then bring his knee up. It meant bracketing Sasha more closely between his legs, and a moment of sharp worry speared through the warmth of calm that was wrapping its welcome haze around his mind.

“All right, Sasha?” he whispered.

“Alright, Oscar,” she replied, already looping the doubled rope around his ankle. “So like... you were gonna tell me, right? How it - what ‘slike for you.”

“Warm,” Oscar murmured immediately. This close, he could catch Sasha’s distinct leather-and-steel scent now and then as she moved, and there was something comforting in that, too.

She snorted. He could feel the rope as she wound it around his leg from the ankle upward.

“Usually you got more words than that, Oscar,” Sasha replied. She still hesitated before saying his name, as though reminding herself each time that yes, this was correct, this was allowed. He found it endearing. “Oh- an’also- what, um. What about y’r arms?”

Oscar gave this question some thought, his attention locked on the snug feel of binding rope as Sasha carefully copied the spacing and knotwork on the leg already tied.

“I have,” he began cautiously, “in the past, had my arms bound.” Oscar paused, waiting to see if Sasha had any response, and continued when she only nodded. “I may- I _will very likely_ \- have gone... quiet. By the time we reach that point. Nonverbal. Or at least, approaching it.”

There was an amused glint in Sasha’s dark eye when she glanced up at him sidelong. “So _this_ is how we get you t’shut up,” she replied impishly. Oscar didn’t hesitate to stick out his tongue at her, childishly, and she giggled.

“If you feel comfortable with the knots? I would welcome my arms bound as well. But it is in no way required.” Oscar glided his fingertips over his thigh, humming with quiet delight in the contrast between his warm skin and the rougher texture of the rope. Sasha had finished the topmost knot, just at the inside of his knee, and was tugging the loose rope through the next ring of the spiral.

“I reckon I c’n give it a go,” she answered after a moment.

Sasha paused, resting her own fingertips against the half-finished knot to hold it in place. Oscar could feel with exquisite clarity the roughness of her scars and calluses, distinct from the roughness of the rope. It was always a wonder to him, in these moments, how sharp his senses were even while his mind slowly went slack.

She peered up into Oscar’s face, searching his unfocused gaze, holding it. “I c’n use my imagination,” she told him quietly, “if you trust me." Sasha continued with more than a hint of pride in her voice, "‘m pretty good at these knots.” 

Oscar let her trap him, staring into Sasha’s serious face. She was, he reflected, completely competent in everything she did. Her confidence was not misplaced.

“I trust you,” he whispered, and Sasha nodded and looked away to resume knotting the ropes. Oscar noted the hint of red staining the tips of her ears and wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about it. Under normal circumstances, he took a certain delight in setting someone off-balance. Here? Now... _Her_. It was less fulfilling.

“Right,” Sasha said, and let out a long breath. “So. I’ll keep tyin’. You-” She poked him in the ribs with one skinny finger, and Oscar couldn’t help a reflexive twitch backward, bending protectively over the sensitive spot. Her eyes glinted with amusement, and he knew he was doomed. Sasha would not soon forget a piece of information like _Oscar Wilde is ticklish_. “-you start talkin’,” she finished.

Oscar closed his eyes and breathed in. Sasha knew what she was doing now. They were unobserved, in quiet and only dimly lit space, the outside world locked out. 

He was, for a few minutes at least, safe. What a novelty.

Oscar let go of the breath he was holding. He fixed his full attention on _feeling_ , rather than thinking; focused on his sharpening senses rather than his dulling mind. He felt acutely the cleverness of Sasha’s fingertips as she tucked rope around rope to secure his body for him; felt the bands snug against his skin, a constant caress that made him shiver, made him sigh. Another breath in: yes, there was the calming pressure of rope around his chest, constricting. Compressing. _Cradling_.

The next exhalation carried his voice with it as Oscar stopped gripping the drifting edges of his mind and just. Let. Go.


	4. Sasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every wall a bastion around a vulnerable core.

Wi- _Oscar_ had been right about his own state. Sasha watched him after he closed his eyes. He was... _slipping_ . It was fascinating and a bit _weird_ , and Sasha frowned, trying to work out why it seemed so strange.

Beyond the fact that he was wrapped in rope. _That_ was a little odd, yeah (she'd seen people wrapped up in rope before but generally not because they'd _asked_ for it, usually they were quite put out about it in fact), but that wasn’t what was insistently poking her for attention.

The penny dropped abruptly and with a sharp impact: she’d never seen him _actually relaxed_ . Sasha watched the easy slide of Oscar’s body into something looser, and thought about how he had spoken to her tonight: openly and honestly, like he was an actual _person_ instead of a walking annoyance.

 _Huh_.

Sasha blinked at the sudden realisation of just how much of Oscar’s irritating flippancy was, frankly, _bullshit_. 

It was a mask designed to obscure the permanent thrum of keyed-up tension that powered Oscar Wilde like a lightning elemental in a horseless carriage.

It was obvious, now she came to think about it, and fascinating, and Sasha could _see_ the moment when he finally just _let go_.

It didn’t take her long to tie the rest of him, now she’d got the hang of how the ropes went. Oscar’s voice was really comfortable to listen to, actually, especially since she didn’t have to _answer_. Conversations were always easier if it was other people having them.

Sasha bound his crossed arms against his chest; gently tipped him to lie on his side; carefully pushed his knees up to his chest. It seemed natural to position him like this, curled like a child. She didn’t question it.

Oscar murmured, "Everything feels so ...acute. The air moves as you do, and I feel it. The rope is rougher, and the pressure of it bound around me feels...it feels like being under a heavy blanket. Safe."

Sasha figured she could see what he meant about feeling safe under a blanket. Sometimes, while they traveled, if the LOLOMG wasn’t staying the night indoors, Sasha’d wrap up in one just to feel like there was something, _anything_ at her back.

So _that_ checked out, although she did wonder why Oscar’d need to go to all this fuss with ropes if he could just cuddle up under a duvet.

Still, as Mr. Gusset had told her once, ‘Ours is not to judge, Sasha, only to wonder why.’

She’d wondered about _that_ a lot too. Who _said_ stuff like that? Like, the first time; obviously Bi Ming Gusset said it, and now apparently she did too, but like, what kind of person was the first bloke to just up and spit something like that out?

Bloke like Wilde, probably.

 _Oscar_.

"The movement of the rope is hypnotic," Oscar murmured as Sasha knotted the last of the ropes to hold him in his gently curled position on the floor. His voice was losing focus. "It pulls me with it, as it slips over my body and your knots tuck it into place."

 _Your knots_.

Sasha blinked. _Her_ knots. Yeah.

 _Yeah_.

Oscar was - Oscar was _in a good place_ , even if she didn’t understand it, and she’d put him there.

Sasha hadn’t expected to be proud of herself. She grinned and sat back on her heels, looking over her work with a critical eye. Here and there, she reached to check a knot, or to slide her fingers between the rope and Oscar’s skin, to be sure it was not abrading.

"Your hands are cool," Oscar whispered. His voice had taken on a certain musicality, something like singing, but not entirely, as though he hadn’t actually stopped humming to speak. "Your hands are cool, and have their own gravity where you touch, and it pulls all sensation to it. Like curious fish darting up to nip lightly at one's toes dangling in the water."

What a _weird_ thing to say. 

Sasha caught, at the very periphery of her vision, a brief flash of something brightly golden and crimson, and whipped her head round to look. She caught her breath at the last fading flick of an illusory goldfish's tail through the air.

_Oh._

Well.

Alright, then.

Oscar released a long, easy breath, and it seemed to pull a little more tension out of him. He was softer than Sasha had ever seen him, had ever seen _anyone_ , really. What did that _feel_ like, to be _relaxed_ like that?

It hurt a little, when it occurred to her that she had no idea.

Sasha let out a huff of breath, dragged her sleeve over her eyes, and considered Oscar.

He couldn’t be comfortable like that. Just. On the floor, no blanket or pillow, nothing but his skin and the rough stone and the rope.

Sasha shifted to sit rather than kneel, slid closer to him, and carefully lifted Oscar’s head to rest it on her leg. He was humming still- no, _singing_ , softly enough that Sasha couldn’t quite make out the words. Didn’t sound like _English,_ she could tell that much.

It was beautiful, though.

It sounded like water, a little. Sasha hadn’t grown up with much in the way of babbling brooks and clear streams, but she’d seen a thing or two while traveling and had an idea of what they might be like. She even thought she could smell it, for a second.

There was another ephemeral flicker at the periphery of her vision, and Sasha looked up again.

This time she caught more than a glimpse, and stared, stunned.

There was water.

There was _actual_ water, _actually_ running near the far wall, a little rill of it that glittered in the uncertain lanternlight until, after a moment, it -

-didn’t. 

Like the goldfish, the streamlet evaporated, and Sasha stared at the empty space it had been, and wondered.

She looked down at Oscar. He was still singing, and Sasha thought she caught a faint spill of something bright carried on his breath.

_...like curious fish..._

In a moment of her own curiosity, Sasha brushed tendrils of dark hair out of Oscar’s face, frowning a little - her hands were so _rough_ , she knew, and he was so ... _not_. But Oscar only turned his face into the touch, and his voice shifted, pulling into itself a subtle and sweet harmonic. 

A human voice probably shouldn’t be able to do that, Sasha thought idly, and dismissed it. There were a lot of things a human voice shouldn’t be able to do.

Goldfish, for one.

Running water.

Or the grass that was growing up around them, intangibly rustling in some illusory breeze.

Oscar appeared, just at present, to be unaware of the limitations of the human voice.

Sasha stared at the grass as it wavered in and out of visibility. Grass shouldn’t do that either, but then again it was Oscar’s, and she figured he could do what he wanted with it. He didn’t seem to be in a position right now to care much about how reality worked.

He seemed-

It was like-

It was like he’d sunk down inside himself, and he was singing about what he saw there, and Sasha wondered if this was normal (for him; there was nothing _normal_ about this, but maybe it happened all the time when he did this?) ...or if Oscar was doing it for her.

He did say he would tell her what it was like.

Hesitantly, Sasha reached down and touched his shoulder. There was a scar there, an old one (and she knew really well what an old scar looked like), and she traced it with one rough fingertip. Knife, maybe? Dull one, if it was - it was a wide, ragged slash that hadn’t healed up clean like a sharp knife cut would.

Oscar didn’t move, but he sighed softly, and something in the song changed. The scent of green and growing things grew stronger, a little, and the dim lanternlight moved. Trees, Sasha realised. Oscar was singing trees into being around them.

Because of her. Because she touched him.

Did it. Really matter so much?

Oscar was so _distant_ most of the time. He did it on purpose, all the barbed words and sharp wit and breezy dismissal - it was obviously an act, when you really looked at him.

Maybe it _did_ matter so much. How _lonely_ must it be, behind that wall?

Sasha’d caught glimpses of him here and there, the _real_ him. He was friendly enough with her now. Clearly he _trusted_ her.

Maybe this was what friendship was to him. Occasional cracks in a wall that nobody else could even imagine seeing through.

And now here he was, practically boneless in her lap, singing his calm into reality around her, _for her._

Sasha looked around them. She took in the trees and the grass, all of it uncertain as heat haze but persevering on the strength of Oscar's singing (and she could feel _that_ now, too, felt his unshackled magic - delicate, diffuse - as it breathed along her skin, skimmed the surface of her awareness, shaped itself benignly around her). She looked down at Oscar, really _looked_ at him.

There wasn’t a hint of tension anywhere in his face. He lay against her, entirely trusting, and that was _completely_ new, and strange, and she had no idea what to do with it, except-

Sasha made a decision she hadn’t been aware she was considering.

Oscar had completely dismantled his walls for her. He was letting her _in_.

Sasha knew about walls. She knew how important they were, what kind of life made you put them up, especially as high as Oscar’s were.

As hers were.

But Oscar was. He was _letting her in_.

Sasha breathed out.

There in the semi-darkness of a grey and empty warehouse, in almost perfect solitude, in the eye of a gentle maelstrom of untethered song, Sasha let Oscar in, too.

She rested her hand on Oscar’s shoulder - _gods_ he was so warm - and smoothed her palm over his skin, feeling the scar again, feeling rope and then skin and then rope as she stroked him like a cat, petting his shoulder and his arm and his back. She tried to remember the last time she’d _touched_ anyone like this. There were memories, and Sasha shoved them away and down and _away_ and focused on this, instead, right now by itself, completely separate from anything else.

That was easier. That was okay.

Touching Oscar was okay. It was safe. It was. And Oscar was actually a very _soft_ person. ‘S why his walls were so high.

It was _nice_. It was like his singing: a little weird, hard to understand, but beautiful in its way and something that was, right now, just for her.

And he _was_ still singing. Sasha shut out everything else. She let herself just _be there_ , and she listened to Oscar’s song, and let it start to make sense of the landscape that he was still building around them, a quiet and sheltering place that seemed somehow familiar.

Sasha didn’t recognise the place any more than she recognised the words in Oscar’s song. But they belonged together, somehow. And they made her heart ache.

She’d never been homesick, had just listened to others talk of it - Hamid, early on, and Azu sometimes. It had been curious to her, but never something she could genuinely understand. Sasha thought now, though, that she might have an idea what it felt like. Oscar’s illusions reflected a place that she had never seen before, but she _missed it_ , deep in her heart, and that could only come from Oscar.

And Sasha realised she had no idea where _Oscar_ came from. She’d never bothered to find out.

This was a little bit of it, though. Had to be. Lush and green and bright with sunlight and _clean_ and _safe_.

Safe.

Maybe she was safe here too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally!  
> I know there are some of you who have been patiently waiting for an update, and to you can only apologise profusely. This chapter fought back for a while, but I think we've finally come to an agreement.
> 
> ~~There remains only the epilogue, I think, and then this particular story's told.~~
> 
> Honestly... this one needs no epilogue, no closing chapter. There was a conversation to happen, but that can wait for another story. Let us, dear reader, allow them their quiet and their introspection and their _safety_.
> 
> They've earned it.


	5. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftercare is important, for everyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally not intended to include this epilogue. I dug it up and re-read it recently, though, and decided that what with the global epidemic of sheer idiocy under which we appear to be labouring, we could all use a little safety and security right now.

Eventually, when the illusions had faded and the lamplight had become once again the only illumination, Oscar stirred.

“...time,” he whispered, as though the song had stolen all his voice. Carefully, Sasha slid out from beneath his head and began unbinding his limbs.

They  _ were _ awfully good knots.

Sasha didn’t watch as Oscar stretched and worked through muscles stiff from prolonged stillness. She coiled the ropes up around her arm, packing them neatly into the satchel in which she’d brought them, and tried not to think about how vulnerable he’d been.

It scared her. He was important.

To  _ her _ . Oscar was a friend every bit as much as Hamid or Azu or Grizzop or Zo-

He was a friend.  _ Her _ friend, she’d only just now sorted out, and Sasha didn’t have so many of those that she could afford to take any of them for granted. 

And he was so  _ soft  _ under all the sarcasm and bad puns and his  _ stupid _ , infuriating, familiar smirk - 

It scared her. Right down to the closed-off core of her, it scared her. Being soft like that - you couldn’t  _ survive _ ,  _ anybody  _ could come along and shove a knife in it and lots of people  _ would _ and what if the sarcastic shell wasn’t  _ enough _ what if he got  _ hurt _ -

“All right, Sasha?”

She jumped, realised she’d been holding onto the same half-coiled length of rope without moving for- how long? Long enough for Oscar to notice, anyway ( _ dammit _ ). Sasha half-turned and gave him a guilty grin over her shoulder.

“Alright, Wi-  _ Oscar _ .”

“Mhmm.” Oscar didn’t believe her. He was  _ watching  _ her, the kind of too-sharp watching that said he was actually  _ seeing  _ her. It was  _ annoying _ .

Sasha thought about walls for a moment. His walls.  _ Her  _ walls.

Her shoulders slumped.

“That was - it was nice,” Sasha said finally, without looking at him. “You looked, like... like there was nothin’ wrong, like you weren’t  _ carryin’ _ anythin’, right? And it. I just-”

“Sasha?”

“...yeah?”

“What are you afraid of?”

_ Fuckin’ell _ , how did he  _ know _ ?

“I’m  _ looking _ at you. It’s written all over your face.” Oscar sounded amused. And worried, a little, and Sasha winced at the second swift stab of guilt; he’d  _ just _ managed, just  _ minutes  _ ago, to put all that down and here she was shoving it all right back at him before he could even put his  _ clothes  _ back on.

“Sasha?”

Sasha hesitated.

“What if I can’t keep you safe?” she blurted out, and didn’t look at him.

“-what?”

“What if. I mean, you were all -  _ soft _ , right, and I thought about, about what the world  _ does  _ to soft people, and I realised that I can’t- I can’t-”

Sasha hated the sting of heat in her eyes, hated the hard place in her throat that made it hurt to breathe, hated the threat of  _ showing too much _ , hated the soft places in herself that made her just as vulnerable as Oscar had been-

“Sasha, may I...?”

Oscar had moved closer to her; she could half-see him at the very edge of her vision, one of his hands offered palm-up in front of her, and his voice was so  _ quiet  _ and so  _ warm  _ and so Sasha didn’t think, just put her hand in his.

It was the slowest hug Sasha’d ever received. Not that she’d had so very many in her life to compare it to, but Oscar was careful with her, like she was the soft one, like she was the one who needed keeping safe.

It felt good, though.

It  _ felt  _ safe.

Sasha didn’t protest when Oscar gently tugged her down to sit on the floor. She didn’t argue when he slid an arm under her knees and turned her to sit sideways; she didn’t fight it when one arm wrapped around her back and shoulders and his other hand came to rest lightly on her head to gently urge it down against his shoulder.

It was weird- not as weird as the ropes, maybe, but still weird- to be  _ held _ .

"We keep each other safe,” Oscar said quietly. “When we need it, when we can’t prop up the walls anymore, for just a little while. We keep each other safe.”

Weird, yeah. But it was  _ nice _ .

“Alright,” Sasha answered, and was too late to stifle a yawn that nearly cracked her jaw.

Nice. And... yeah. Safe.

Sasha was quiet while a few more minutes of peaceful night slipped past them. Oscar was warm, and she could hear his heart and the regular, unhurried in-and-out drift of his breath, and there was no  _ risk  _ here, nothing to guard against or watch for or be afrai- or to worry about.

“Oscar?”

“Mmm?”

“...will you. Sing somethin’? That was nice, while you were singin’. Earlier.”

“Sasha.”

“-yeah?”

“Sasha, of  _ course _ I will sing for you. Anytime you ask.” She couldn’t see Oscar’s face, sitting tucked against his chest with her head on his shoulder, but Sasha knew he was smiling, anyway.

That was nice, too. That felt good.

Sasha closed her eyes, while Oscar’s music rose and wrapped around her, and let herself for a little while at least trust the  _ nice  _ and the  _ good  _ and the  _ safe. _


End file.
